Prison Letters: Method and Practice in an Era of Repression

• In Event: Narrative and Spectacle Shared Across Spaces: Constructing Danger or Unsettling Constructions

Abstract

Letter writing, though a historically important form of communication for many people in prison, is a relatively underutilized method within criminology. This is despite the fact that letter writing offers a number of methodological benefits to researchers (Kralik et al. 2000) and centers participant autonomy in the research process (Bosworth et al. 2005), something difficult to do in carceral settings. Drawing on my own experience exchanging letters with incarcerated people in three state-operated prisons in Mississippi, I discuss the methodological utility of letter writing for critical criminological researchers, particularly those examining prison narratives. I show that letter-writing is unique insofar as letters are typically written without intervention and often written with spontaneity. Rather than relying on memory in an interview, participants can describe their lives in real time, as well as decide how and in what capacity they want to participate in a project, thus dictating the narrative documentation process. I also, crucially, discuss the barriers to letter writing – in my own project and broadly – in an increasingly hostile political environment and surveilled prison mail landscape. I assert that rather than succumbing to these forces, academics should pursue more narrative projects using prison letter writing as a method.

Author

• Austin Luzbetak, University of Minnesota